


Never Shined Through

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-22
Updated: 2009-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with emotions, Castiel decides, isn't that they invite doubt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Shined Through

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Title from Metallica. This is set during and after SPN 4x16 and 4x17. Thank you once again to the lovely [](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/profile)[**smilla02**](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/) \-- there isn't enough pie and iced tea in the world.

After Alastair falls, there's a moment suspended while Castiel listens to Sam's breathing and watches the relentless mask of his face waver, soften to uncertainty. It is too much intrusion, but Castiel can't resist reaching out with a quick touch of his mind, to hear the air drawing in and out of Sam's lungs, the pounding rush of blood through his veins and heart. He draws back immediately.

Sam's gaze lowers under Castiel's stare. But whatever expression was in his eyes melts away in a blink to something else as he turns and reaches Dean in two strides of his long legs.

Castiel remains where he is. He should move, he should _help_ but all he can do is stand there. (Standing still listening to the low, burnt edge in Dean's voice when he begged not to have to go through that door. Standing still with Alastair's screams sounding through the wall).

"Dean?" Sam says his name sharp, deep and loud, as if he'll bring Dean awake with his voice. He puts two fingers against Dean's neck. The tense line of his shoulders slump, some of the fear goes out of his face, and Castiel feels an answering shift within himself, the tight clenching of his own chest easing. "Dean." Sam whispers it this time. His fingers shake as he pulls out his phone.

But then he hesitates. Castiel watches as Sam looks at the body of Alastair's human host, then at the devil's trap, the star of Solomon, the instruments on the cart. Dean remains limp, eyes closed as Sam tugs at his shoulders, gathering Dean up against his chest, then stands and hoists Dean over his shoulder.

The room wobbles. The blood trickling down the side of Castiel's face itches. He needs to go repair himself. Not yet. He would repair Dean, lift his hand and close the cuts on his face, erase the bruises, put him back together the way he did as he placed his soul back into his body. But Dean's soul is within his flesh, and using that power now would burn him, and Sam if he's too near, to dust.

"Let me--" Castiel steps forward.

"You've done enough," Sam says, in a tone that says he thinks Castiel has done nothing of any use to anyone ever.

"Sam."

This time, Sam stops, fingers gripping his brother's arm. He bears the weight on his back as if it's made of stone and air both, as if he would carry Dean across a continent if he had to.

"Let me," Castiel asks again. It feels like praying. "What Uriel did to bring Dean here is...discouraged." He doesn't offer an explanation why transporting a human is allowed only rarely. "We can do it at great need. I can carry you both."

There's a long pause before Sam nods. Castiel grips Sam's shoulder with one hand, Dean's with the other. They feel warm. Castiel spreads his wings.

Before the small cloud of dust and debris even settles outside the hospital, Sam, who seems shocked and out of breath but heedless of his own condition, is kneeling on the ground clutching Dean against him. Then he's shouting for help, and men and women in cotton aqua or pink cotton uniforms race towards them wheeling a gurney.

They lift Dean up, put him on the gurney, and carry him through the automatic doors, Sam following.

Castiel backs away from the bright lights; no one has noticed him. It would be an easy thing to spread his wings and be gone, but he finds he can't. For the first time they feel heavy, a burden.

The problem with emotions, Castiel decides, isn't that they invite doubt.

They swarm over him, a battalion, as his human body hits against something and his fingers reach, shaking, to find a metal fence. He drops to his knees on the grass, gripping the links. He can't shut out the image of Dean lying on the devil's trap, eyes shut, or the way Sam's face looked when he found a pulse. A sudden and unfamiliar vicious thrust of self-directed rage hits him. He's done a lot of watching, a lot of stand and wait.

 _You think this is righteous?_

* * *

He heals himself out in the middle of the field beyond the hospital parking lot. If anyone sees the flare of white light against the darkness, he doesn't care.

Then he walks into the hospital, the act taking more of his will than entering the gates of hell. He finds out where Dean's room is, takes the elevator like anybody else, and then stops halfway down the shining clean corridor. Up ahead the door he wants, where he is not welcome, is open.

Facing Sam's tired disgust and contained fury is the start of penance.

* * *

Uriel is the middle, and the loss of him hurts worse than his betrayal.

The end, and the true beginning, is Dean with tubes running out of his nose, a machine beeping in time with his heartbeat.

* * *

His superiors believe humans shouldn't be told too much about their destiny. Castiel tells Dean what he knows anyway, an act of defiance that he hopes will bring comfort. Instead it almost pulls Dean under. Castiel lets his senses to travel into Dean just for a moment, listens to the life of his body, again longs to repair that battered flesh.

He tells Dean he needs to be more careful, letting Dean believe whatever he wants about what that means.

* * *

The problem with emotions, Castiel decides, is the feeling of them.

* * *

For days he walks a dangerous line, hovering and guarding, but he doesn't approach. His superiors watch him carefully. They tighten their control on the garrison, made wary by what happened with Uriel.

In snatches, he witnesses Sam's attentive care, Dean's slow recovery. They are too quiet together, so unlike what he's seen between them.

One day Sam and Dean vanish from his perception. Gone, as if they never were.

It feels like someone's sawed his wings off.

* * *

Three weeks later they blink back into existence. Castiel hears the murmurs about what happened and knows it is unlikely anyone would have listened to him had he known about it ahead of time, and had the chance to object.

He finds them together in the parking lot by a lake, in the kind of moment that he knows was once common but is now notable. Dean's sitting on the hood of his car, Sam leaning against the side. They aren't exactly facing each other, but they seem aware and at peace, each drinking slowly from a beer bottle. The late afternoon light makes the amber glass glow.

Castiel touches down several yards away, the wind ruffling the dead leaves strewn on the ground, making waves lap more fiercely against that section of the shoreline. The moment Castiel appears, Sam's back goes straight, shoulders tense while his grip on the bottle shifts as if he's considering its use as a weapon.

Dean only takes another swallow of beer as if he's felt nothing.

"What do you want?" Sam's fingers tighten around the bottle.

Castiel recalls Sam's outstretched hand, the fierce coldness of his face as he did what he did to Alastair, and knows that Sam could probably destroy him too.

"I heard about what happened," Castiel says.

"You mean you weren't in on the super secret angel plan?" Dean finally turns to look at him and there's a challenge, a mockery, in his voice.

"No, I wasn't. I told you, they don't tell me much." Castiel pushes his hands into his pockets. "I wanted to see that you and Sam were all right after your...ordeal."

Dean barks out a short laugh while Sam echoes it with a sour smile. "You did, huh?" Dean says.

"I wish my superiors had not chosen this course of action."

"Really." Dean finishes the beer and chucks the bottle off into the trees with a powerful motion of his arm. "You mean you're _surprised_? Yeah, that's a shocker. Angels are dicks. Oh, and they wipe people's memories and send them running around like rats in a maze. I got a pep talk as a swell bonus." He turns to Castiel, the sun behind him, and spreads his arms wide. "There," he says, cast into shadow, outlined in light, fierce and bitter. "All better, rarin' to go."

"I regret what happened," Castiel says.

"Cry me a river, flyboy." Dean opens the driver's side door of the car, the creak of it like a second reprimand.

Castiel catches the quick, worried glance Sam gives Dean; more than worry. There's a kind of sadness there as well.

"Wait." When Castiel takes a step towards Dean, Sam moves to block his path.

"I think you'd better go," Sam says, his voice soft and all the more frightening for it.

"My superiors stepped in because they think I am not handling my assignment well." He wants them to understand. He _needs_ them to understand.

"Oh, your _assignment._ " Dean turns back, his mouth twisting. "Next you'll tell me some more bull about how you're in deep shit with the big kahoonas because you've gotten too attached, yadda yadda..."

"Yes."

"Then why--" Dean breaks off, rubs his hand over his face. "Aw, forget it." But then he says, the words coming out run together in a hurried rush, "Why the fuck didn't you do something sooner?"

Castiel knows he's not talking about Sandover. "I..."

"Save it. I told you, find yourself another hammer. Let's go, Sam."

Sam throws his beer bottle off into the trees, an echo of Dean's earlier action. He opens the passenger door.

"I'm sorry," Castiel says, and his voice sounds raw, which is not how he meant the words to come out.

He didn't mean to give so much away.

Dean doesn't look up, just slides in behind the wheel. "Good," he says.

The flat coldness in Dean's voice gives Castiel a strange twinge of hope, because it is Dean angry, it is Dean fighting, it is Dean who can end this, no matter how much he claims he's not strong enough.

* * *

Castiel remains standing by the lake long after the Winchesters have driven away.

It was asked of him, and Dean agreed to do it. Castiel finds no comfort in the thought that Dean did it only because it was necessary and needed. While there are many things Castiel still doesn't understand, he knows now that is not the only reason.

He asked, _Castiel_ asked, and Dean agreed. Castiel, who pulled Dean out of hell, who somehow gained his gratitude and a grudging ounce of his trust.

They can use this. Castiel should continue to use this.

He should.

He's not sure he can, ever again.

Dean needs to be more careful.

~end  



End file.
